An Interview with Mrs. E

An interview with Miss E. (that is how they call her at school)

How did you end up here in the UAE? - Airplane (haha). Well, my husband and I were looking for teaching positions. This was one of several offers. We saw this as one of a great cultural experience and opportunity. The rest is history.

What are you teaching here? 7th and 8th grade middle school science.. 7th is environmental. 8th is physical science, consisting of chemistry and physics.

How are you liking it so far? Teaching here is thrilling. Kids will be kids, no matter where you go. The array of cultures in our little middle school has ...  this is what I am trying to say, I can not just teach science. For instance, I use the word "marsh" the other day, typically kids in the States would know what a marsh is, but most of my class did not know what a  "marsh" was or had ever seen one. My teaching  has to morph into where my students knowledge base is at. 

How many cultures are in your class? - 5 continents are represented.  What are some of them? Four different countries from Africa, Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan, Rwanda, S. Africa, Germany, Malaysia, Philippines, Lebanon, Jordan, and the UAE.

Do any have English as their first language? Some, probably a quarter. Typically, each student knows three or more languages. Which is their original country's language, then English, and the third is one they are working on.

What do you like most about teaching here? Building my ESL skills. When you have one culture in the room that has walked with elephants in the savannahs, another culture that has grown up in the dessert with camels, another from the mountains of Northern Europe, one that has lived with monkeys in the rain forest, who are all speaking the same language, but are still trying to understand each other, that provides for some sever ELL strategy use to be implement in the classroom.

Do you consider that fun?  I consider it a challenge.  To optimize ELL strategies so students from all over the world can learn and communicate together.

Tell me a little bit about your school.  Haha - I don’t know that much. It is the 3rd year it has been operating, almost 400 students 6-12 grades, first year we have graduating seniors,  laid out in a square donut, courtyard in the middle is their playground, 2 stories, 1 big beautiful library from a small private college, a cafeteria, administration is on the opposite side of the cafeteria.  The rest are classrooms, from  art and music, economics, AP bio, physics, French, German, Arabic, Islamic social studies, American social studies, PE, and math.

What does your classroom look like?  There fourteen, two man movable lab tables (no gas lines in the room), a wall of windows, a Smart Board (touch sensitive white board), a dry erase board, cabinets in back, more electrical outlets then you know what to do with, counter space under the window and in the back. I have all white walls, which are made of cement, so my acoustics are loud and sound echoes.

What was like preparing to go here?  Unsettled, we did not know anyone here, not did we see the place before we got here. We had a small idea about the culture. It was difficult to leave our friends and family, with a hope to settle down.

Do you have anything we would like to add about your teaching experience? We don’t coordinate like the elementary school teachers do, together with the other teachers of the same grade. We work with a community group of teachers per subject matter in our departments.

Tell me a little about the people you work with.  I work with people from England, Scotland, Lebanon, SE United States, and Tonga (but he is most recently from New Zealand). The guys have their office and the girls have their office, not per the culture, it just worked out that way. We each have our individual way of teaching, but in the end we each care about the kids learning their subject matter.

What has been different from teaching in the States? The States you have three to four cultures in a classroom, yet everyone is familiar with the same community and environment the school is in. Here the classroom does not have a common or familiar environment to relate to or springboard off of. We all come from different backgrounds of understanding.  With the ESL strategies, I have to find one that works and use it often to know that students are learning the content material.

Are you experiencing what you expected? Yes and No. I did not expect to be living out of a hotel for two months. In the classroom, I was not expecting the rooms to be so loud and echo. I was not expecting the kids to not have a  place to play, like a playground or a field of grass. No expecting the humidity to be so high, or the high schoolers to not know how to throw a football. I expected a good staff and they are. I have a good team to work with in the science department. I did not expect Randell's school to look so beautiful inside. I never expected to see so many buses outside the school . They are not the typical yellow buses, but little white buses (30 of them). I did not expect the air-conditioning to be so cold that I would have to wear a sweater inside.

What is one of your favorite things about being over here? Meeting people from other countries, that have lived and worked in other countries and experienced other cultures. Making friends with people who come from all parts of the world.

What is  one of your hopes while living here? Already did it - I rode a camel (haha) :) Another one is to ride a Ferrari coaster. 

Last few comments? I am still watching for flying carpets, I have yet to ride a Ferrari roller coaster, and meet the Sheikh.